Developer outsources his job to China, watches cat videos all day

The developer outsourced his job to China for a fraction of his salary, choosing to spend his days surfing Reddit, …A U.S. software developer has committed a workplace scam that makes him either the world's laziest employee or a genius.

The developer outsourced his job to China for a fraction of his salary, choosing to spend his days surfing Reddit, eBay and watching cat videos, according to a blog post by Verizon Enterprise Solutions. Not a bad way to spend a workday.

Andrew Valentine, a forensic manager at Verizon reveals the details of the scam, carried out by an "inoffensive" long-time employee of the unnamed company the author refers to a 'Bob.' He's a family man, the post says.

It's always the quiet ones. The post says the case unfolded after the company set up a Virtual Private Network to let developers work from home on some days. Not long afterward, the company discovered someone was connected to the network from Shenyang, China.

The Chinese connection was logged in using Bob's credentials.

"The VPN logs showed him logged in from China, yet the employee is right there, sitting at his desk, staring into his monitor."

Staring into his monitor watching kittens play, apparently. Bob's computer contained hundreds of PDF invoices from a contractor in China who he had hired to do his job for about a fifth of his six figure salary, according to the post.

He may have been running the same scam at several companies simultaneously, earning several hundred thousand dollars a year while paying his Chinese counterpart about $50,000 annually.

"The best part?" says the post, "His code was clean, well written, and submitted in a timely fashion. Quarter after quarter, his performance review noted him as the best developer in the building."